A holiday wish for smarter giving

By Catey Hill

In a series that started last week, MarketWatch’s retirement columnists offer their best wishes for the season—and a few tips to help readers move from wish to reality. Today: Encore contributing writer Catey Hill weighs in on philanthropic giving.

Last year, Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charities, with roughly 40% of it coming in from Thanksgiving through the year end, and many experts expect that figure to tick up slightly this year. So no doubt, as the year comes to a close — and the window for deducting these donations from your 2012 tax bill nears — many of you are doing some last-minute thinking about what organization you’ll give your money to this year. My holiday wish for you is that you find an excellent charity to donate to, one that helps a cause close to your heart—and, most of all, spends its money wisely.

To help you find the right charity, I recommend checking out Charitynavigator.org. The site has evaluated more than 6,000 charities. Using a simple star-rating system, it rates them based on their financial health, transparency and how well the charities spend their money. Bottom line: The site makes it much simpler to give back effectively.

Story Conversation

About Encore

Encore looks at the changing nature of retirement, from new rules and guidelines for financial security to the shifting identities, needs and priorities of people saving for and living in retirement. Our lead blogger is editor Matthew Heimer, and frequent contributors include editor Amy Hoak, writer Catey Hill, and MarketWatch columnists Elizabeth O’Brien, Robert Powell and Andrea Coombes. Encore also features regular commentary from The Wall Street Journal retirement columnists Glenn Ruffenach and Anne Tergesen and the Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Alicia H. Munnell.